ADULTS who ride in the back seat of new cars are at a higher risk of serious injury during an accident than those who sit in the front, a new study has found.

Back seat passengers more likely to be hurt

Adults who ride in the back seat of new cars are at a higher risk of serious injury during an accident than those who sit in the front, a new study has found.

While it is still safer for children to ride in the rear seats of new cars, elderly passengers are three times more likely to sustain a serious or fatal injury in the back of new cars.

The study leader, Lynne Bilston, a biomechanical engineer, said there had been enormous development in safety technologies for front seat occupants over the past 15 to 20 years, but those safety features had not been introduced into rear seats.

''Things like airbags, seat belts with pretensioners which take the slack out of a seat belt when a crash occurs, load limiters which limit the force in the seat belt and reduce the risk of rib fractures … almost all of those have only occurred in the front seat,'' Associate Professor Bilston, of Neuroscience Research Australia, said.

As part of the study the researchers analysed data from almost 10,000 crashes with both front and rear seat passengers.

''That meant we could compare within a specific car how the person in the front seat did compared to how the person in the rear seat did in the same crash,'' she said.

When they divided the accidents into newer cars (built between 1997 and 2007) and older vehicles (1990 to 1996), the group found adults had double the risk of serious injury while sitting in the back seat of a newer vehicle. But children were still safer riding in the rear seat of both new and older vehicles because airbags were designed for adults and as children were smaller they benefited from being further away from the front of the car, where most crashes occur.

The crash data was recorded in the US, but the results still applied to Australia, Associate Professor Bilston said. ''The vast majority of the vehicles we have in Australia are very similar in design to US vehicles.''

More stringent safety regulations over the design of back seats could make them safer in newer vehicles, as well as incorporating safety features found in front seats such as improved seat belts and rear airbags.

''There are safety crash test standards that require a certain level of performance in the front seat, they're needed in the back too,'' said Associate Professor Bilston, whose findings are published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention.